Help For Holiday

Jewish Groups Conduct

Model Seders For Those Who

Can't Be With Families.

Jews worldwide will gather around tables tonight at homes and in synagogues to take part in the Seder, the ritual meal that starts Passover.

Not everyone is so fortunate.

Last year, Ida Paigen celebrated the Seder with her daughter in New York. Because she fractured her hip in a fall, she must spend the beginning of Passover this year at Memorial Hospital in Hollywood.

But the county's two Jewish federations made sure Paigen and others like her celebrated the Jewish holiday in some way. Federation rabbis and volunteers have conducted model Seders in hospitals, nursing homes, jails and other institutions for people who can't observe the holiday with their families.

"Normally, I would want to be with my family. I didn't anticipate this being so nice," Paigen said after participating in a Seder on Thursday with 13 fellow patients in physical rehabilitation at Memorial Hospital.

Passover, an eight-day festival, begins at sundown tonight and commemorates the exodus of the ancient Hebrews from slavery in Egypt. The model Seders were run-throughs in preparation for the holiday.

"Some people will not get to have a real Seder on the first night of Passover," said Rabbi Harold Richter, who conducted the ritual meal at Memorial Hospital and is director of chaplaincy at the Hollywood-based Jewish Federation of South Broward. "Since they can't be with their families, this keeps them in touch with the holiday."

While Richter and others, including schoolchildren, conducted Seders for shut-ins in south Broward, the Jewish Federation of Greater Fort Lauderdale was doing the same in north Broward.

Rabbi David Gordon led a Seder on Thursday for about 35 patients and their families, mostly Jews, at St. John's Nursing and Rehabilitation Hospital in Lauderdale Lakes. Because the center is run by Catholics, Gordon was quick to mention why Christians should appreciate the ritual meal.

"A lot of people don't realize when Jesus sat down at the Last Supper, it was a Seder," said Gordon of Sunrise.

At Memorial Hospital in Hollywood, Richter strummed his guitar, sang with patients in Hebrew and had them read aloud from the Haggadah, which tells the Passover story.

They also sampled symbolic foods from the Seder plate: matzo, the thin "bread of affliction;" horseradish and saltwater, for the bitterness and tears of slavery; a roasted egg, symbolizing rebirth; and haroset, a mixture of apples, nuts and wine that represents the mortar the ancient Hebrews were forced to make for the Egyptians.

Sid Itzkowitz, of Pembroke Pines, who is recovering from spinal surgery, clapped and sang from his wheelchair. Celebrating the meal reminded him of his Jewish roots.